"We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children and develop a rich social, sexual and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings. Yet we hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed--and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg, or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being. But we're not fully satisfied with those stories, so we keep broadening the horizon of our myths; and then we discover that there's a totally different way in which the world is constructed and things originate.

"Today, we're still loaded down, and to some extent embarrassed, by ancient myths...